Google Buys reMail iPhone App for Gmail

Google has acquired a small email search company called reMail, reMail founder Gabor Cselle posted today on his blog. reMail, which was part of the Y Combinator program and raised funding from FriendFeed and Gmail founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh, started in November 2008.

reMail, which made an iPhone app that Google will be discontinuing, provided comprehensive email search for email and IMAP accounts even in offline mode. (Personally, I’d used it until Apple enabled its own mail search for the iPhone, though some reviewers attested reMail was still superior, and I’d believe it.) Google currently doesn’t offer a Gmail app on the iPhone platform, preferring its snazzy HTML 5 web app experience. Cselle said current reMail users can continue to use the app though support will be discontinued at the end of March. Taking out an existing iPhone app is particularly notable given Google has its own competing mobile platform, Android.

While LinkedIn says reMail has or had three employees, Cselle writes in the singular in his blog post, saying he will be joining Google as a Gmail product manager. Cselle is a bit of an web mail fiend; he worked on Gmail while an intern at Google in 2004, researched email in grad school at ETH Zurich and was VP of engineering at Xobni.

Google also recently acquired another Y Combinator startup, EtherPad-maker AppJet, which Buchheit and Singh had invested in as well.